Disruptive Innovation - Publications - Faculty & Research

September 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Supplement

On

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger, Sascha Mader, Jordan Mitchell and Karen Elterman

Slides to support the teaching of the On case, 723-430. On is a premium performance running shoe company founded in Switzerland in 2010. The company rapidly gained traction through its unique CloudTec cushioning technology, its innovative midsole plate called the... View Details

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04 Sep 2013
What Do You Think?

How Relevant is Long-Range Strategic Planning?

confronting large corporations facing innovative upstarts with disruptive ventures, the non-innovator's dilemma. But it also dealt with the challenges of achieving innovation... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

Sometimes, thinking outside the box isn’t ambitious enough to get real innovation flowing. In her new book, Rosabeth Moss Kanter encourages organization leaders to think much more broadly at what restricts creativity and how to overcome... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

August 2014
Case

Netflix: Designing the Netflix Prize (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Wesley M. Cohen, Kynon Ingram, Tushar Kothalkar, Maxim Kuzemchenko, Santosh Malik, Cynthia Meyn, Greta Friar and Stephanie Healy Pokrywa

In 2006, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, was looking for a way to solve Netflix's customer churn problem. Netflix used Cinematch, its proprietary movie recommendation software, to promote individually determined best-fit movies to customers. Hastings determined that a... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Prizes; Digitization; Algorithms; Recommendation Software; Disruption; Transformation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Applications and Software; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Technology Industry; United States

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September 2017 (Revised December 2017)
Case

Hulu: Redefining the Way People Experience TV

By: Henry W. McGee and Christine Snively

In May 2017, Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced the launch of Hulu Live TV, a new offering that would "change the way people experience TV." The new service would allow consumers to bypass traditional cable and satellite delivery and use the Internet to access live... View Details

Keywords: Television Industry; Internet; Television Entertainment; Internet and the Web; Disruptive Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Price; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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16 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

How the Coronavirus Is Already Rewriting the Future of Business

changes will play out after this public health emergency is behind us. In the past, companies have used the lessons learned during periods of disruption to improve their standard operating practices. For example, the great recession... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

April 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Shanzhai! MediaTek and the "White Box" Handset Market

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien and Jyun-Cheng Wang

The term "white box" is often used to describe products without a brand name. Such products are assembled from standardized parts, and they became a very popular category of desktop PCs. Hsinchu, Taiwan based MediaTek is a fabless semiconductor company that unleashed a... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; Competitive Advantage; Wireless Technology; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

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19 May 2015
First Look

First Look: May 19

server or set of servers to store transactions and also avoiding any single party that can ban certain participants or certain types of transactions. Bitcoin is of interest to economists in part for its potential to disrupt existing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2011 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Language and Globalization: 'Englishnization' at Rakuten (A)

By: Tsedal Neeley

Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Rakuten, (Japan's largest online retailer), is at the helm of an organization that is rapidly expanding into global markets. In a critical stride toward becoming the world's No. 1 Internet services company, Mikitani announces... View Details

Keywords: Teaching; Human Capital; Change Management; Transformation; Social Enterprise; Communication Strategy; Internet and the Web; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Leadership; Global Strategy; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Japan

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15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

culture relate to its strategy. Use all this understanding to place innovative bets. This is what the early leaders of GM did. And this is what several generations of executives—beginning in the 1970s with the first oil shocks and the... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

18 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 18

http://dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.01.041 August 2013 The Changing Frontier: Rethinking Science and Innovation Policy Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Renewable Energy By:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2010 (Revised June 2012)
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Hua Dai

As Zuo Zongshen drove the transformation of the Zongshen Industrial Group from an early imitator in the motorcycle business to a company that increasingly focused on innovation as a way to get out of the hyper-competitive commodity business, he continually faced new... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Learning; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China

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15 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 15, 2017

Case 317-011 AEEC: Becoming an Innovation Catalyst No abstract available. Purchase this case:https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/317011-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 317-116 Helena Rubinstein: Making Up the Modern Woman This... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

4+2 = Sustained Business Success

agile company turns out innovative products and services and anticipates disruptive events in an industry rather than reacting when it may already be too late. Relentlessly pursue View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce & Bruce Roberson

22 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 22, 2018

economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the parameters of the model using U.S. Census microdata on firm-level output, R&D, and patenting. The... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

March 2011
Article

The New M&A Playbook

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising and Andrew Waldeck

Companies spend more than $2 trillion on acquisitions every year, yet the M&A failure rate is between 70% and 90%. Executives can dramatically increase their odds of success, the authors argue, if they understand how to select targets, how much to pay for them, and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Integration

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07 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

How Teams Work: Lessons from the Pandemic

happened—can leave some attendees in the dark about nuances and next steps. The researchers also found that switching from on-site to remote work reduced “bounce time,” a term they use to describe impromptu brainstorming sessions. The disappearance of bounce time... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship, at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. [Image: Bulat Silvia] Related Reading What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis Deconstructing 'Customer... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

June 2024
Case

Aidoc: Building a Hospital-Centric AI Platform

By: Ariel D. Stern and Susan Pinckney

In 2023, Israel-based AI health care company Aidoc evaluated its future. The company, founded in 2016, had grown from commercializing a single AI product for radiologists to a software platform that could detect 20 conditions and immediately notify care teams of... View Details

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March 2021
Case

VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein

Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new... View Details